


The Lady of Paris

by ShakespeareFreak



Category: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Genre: Afterlife, All Character Death is Past Tense, Gen, Ghosts, Notre Dame Fire 2019, Notre Dame cathedral, Notre Dame fire, Past Character Death, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 09:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18495772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShakespeareFreak/pseuds/ShakespeareFreak
Summary: It's April 15th, 2019. Notre Dame cathedral is ablaze. The great spire has fallen. In Paris, spirits weep.





	The Lady of Paris

**Author's Note:**

> This is based in the animated Disney film's canon, but totally disregards the direct-to-video sequel. Also, much personal headcanon.

_**April 15th, 2019** _

In Paris, spirits weep.

A young man (it seems he was never destined to live long, and he died in his bed within a decade of the fires that burned half the city to the ground), whose body is no longer hunched and twisted, but straight and strong, hangs his head, withdrawn into his pain, and for a moment he almost looks as he did in life, distorted by sorrow rather than the cruelties of Nature. He was always closest to the Lady, and it is almost like he has lost a friend.

A Romani woman, older now, but her hair still as wild as it was her first Festival of Fools (it could never be tamed despite the rise in station, despite the clumsy shoes and the long skirts she tripped over), clutches at her friends as she cries openly.

The Roma King is nowhere to be found. Esmeralda recalls her brother had never dealt well with strong emotion. He would hide behind a mask of smiles and song, or if he could not, simply disappear, as into thin air.

A tall, bony figure, all angles and paleness, his eyes silver as his hair, silver as rain, is lost in a mire of grief and guilt. It is too much like before: it was an Inferno then, too.

A captain who was once golden as the sun, his brightness now muted with grey (he looks young again—vanity was always a weakness of his—but the grey is still there in other ways), holds his friends and his family and tries to give some kind of comfort. He knows there is no real comfort he can give; war teaches a man that some things are lost forever.

The archdeacon perhaps understands this all best: he died that night, crumpled in agony at the foot of the stairs, as the battle raged on around him, and was not found until almost noon the next day; he died within the cathedral and enfolded in God's arms.  _He_  knows that nothing is lost forever.


End file.
